***On Twitter @OfficialRVGA and on YouTube @ http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialRVGA*** Welcome to the Retro Video Game Addict's Official blog page! Here you will be able to tap into the mind of a man who knows, loves, and enjoys his retro/classic video games. Everything from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64 is covered here, so strap yourself in for a fun ride down memory lane, and don't say that you weren't warned before hand. Please, enjoy your stay and keep your kids off my lawn.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Yeah, yeah. I know what you're
thinking. “Why is there an article about comic books on a retro
video game blog site?”. Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not
exactly sure. I was just laying around doing nothing and I suddenly
felt the need to sit down and type out my feelings on the pulp
storytelling movement that is currently happening over at Dynamite
Entertainment. For those who don't know what I'm talking about,
relax, this won't hurt (I swear!) and you may find yourself kind of
interested in what I have to say. But before I do I have to let you
in on a little secret. You ready? Here it comes.....

Superheroes no longer have to
wear spandex.

There, I said it! Dynamite
Entertainment has enlisted quite the crew to bring us comic book
readers some of the absolute best comics on store shelves right now
and these characters are not spandex clad and do not leap tall
buildings in a single bound. They're normal human beings just like
you and me, but with a few dollars in the bank that allows them to do
what they do. These characters were popular back in the 30's and 40's
but have basically been absent from the public eye for several
decades until a company known as Dynamite Entertainment picked them
up and decided to publish comics based around these characters for
both fans of the originals and a bold new modern audience. This was a
risky task considering modern comic book fans are used to their
heroes having superpowers and being either mutants or tricked out in
some colorful superhero gear. Not these heroes! These guys are
packing heat, wearing fine business suits, ankle long trench coats,
and many of them protect their identities with cheap eye coverings
and fedora's. Take that Spider-Man!

This style of “pulp hero” is
something that actually found popularity before the traditional
superhero ever graced a comic book page. Comic books started finding
their ways to newsstands sometime in the mid 1930's while pulp books
have been printed since the very early 1900's, and the differences
between a superhero and a “pulp hero” is that the pulp hero will
shoot you clean between your eyes and leave for you for dead while
the superhero will try to rehabilitate you. Pulp storytelling is a
violent, take no prisoners, affair that has found it's way back into
readers hands for what appears to be a long haul and something I've
personally taken to over the past couple of years.

Dynamite publishes a lot more pulp
characters than the ones I'm going to discuss in this blog but I'm
choosing to discuss the pulp heroes in the traditional sense. They
publish comics based on John Carter, Zorro, Lone Ranger, Tarzan, and
a few others, but this blog entry is geared more toward The Shadow,
The Spider, Green Hornet, The Black Bat, Miss Fury, and others. For
me (and many others) Dynamite hooked me on the pulp characters when
they first started publishing The Green Hornet sometime in 2010. The
Shadow in May of 2012 was another title that hooked me and then soon
after that they began putting out comics based around The Spider and
before you knew it more and more started trickling in. Luckily pretty
much all of the books within this line have been extremely well
written and feature art that fits the mood of the books. In other
words, it's been a hell of a ride.

I like the fact that these heroes
are not scared to kill their enemies as opposed to the traditional
superheroes you get from DC and Marvel, it gives the books a sense of
unpredictability that you won't find elsewhere. These classic heroes
swear, smoke, drink, engage in adult “situations”, and kill with
the best of them. But all in the name of “justice”, of course.
And why not? Sometimes to preserve the law you need to break the law
and if killing a man who poisoned a city or who tossed an elderly
woman off of a rooftop after wiping out a bank full of hostages is
the only way to get the job done, than I say go for it. The only
alternative is either rehabilitation the criminals by locking them
away in Arkham, or delivering a super powered psychopath to the boys
in blue. And I think we all know how that turns out, you see what I'm
saying?

Now, I'd like to take a few
moments to talk about a few of the specific titles within the pulp
line Dynamite had going on. The firs title I would like to discuss
with you would be their flagship book, The Shadow, which was launched
by the legendary writer known the industry over as Garth Ennis. The
opening arc was a mixed bag to many fans, it seemed like they either
loved it or hated it (I enjoyed it quite a bit) but the sales
remained strong and the story was quite compelling. The artist on the
book illustrates The Shadow and his 1930's surroundings perfectly and
the artist that took over the book on it's 12th issue
gives the title a flair that is up there with some of the best
pencilers in the comic book industry. It's just remarkable. The story
is dark and violent and The Shadow pulls no punches as he fights
criminals in New York and over seas, bringing justice in the only way
he knows how: Through the barrels of his double pistols. Make no
mistake here kids, this isn't you're friendly neighborhood Spider-Man
or your classic red cape who is vowing to bring us “justice in the
American way”, no, this head crackin' to the 10th degree
and definitely not for anyone under the age of 14 or 15.

The Spider is very similar. This
book features a hero who is defending his city against crazed
lunatics on a daily basis while trying to keep an eye on the woman he
loves who just happens to be married to his closest friend, the
police chief. Most of the book is written with The Spider trying to
use the police to help him solve mysteries while trying to keep his
identity safe while he desperately wants to win back his true love.
It's remarkable how this book cliff hangs and pulls you in for the
next issue, it's definitely underrated and deserves all the readers
it can get. In fact, Dynamite almost pulled the plug on it as of it's
12th issue, but fan outcry on the Dynamite forums and on
Twitter helped to #SaveTheSpider and the book is solicited to it's
15th issue as of this writing. The writing in this book is
top notch and some of David Liss' finest work, the art was phenomenal
as well with the original artist and even better with Ivan Rodriguez
since he's taken over pencils as of a few months back. Stellar colors
and inks set this book apart as a real looker too, everything is just
solid all around.

The Green Hornet is off to a
masterful start as Mark Waid takes the character back to his original
roots. Don't confuse this book with the existing Green Hornet title
that was launched by Kevin Smith, though! That Green Hornet title has
been rebranded as “Legacy” and follows the adventures of the
original Hornet's son in the modern day while Waid's book follows the
original Green Hornet in his native setting. Both book are great and
should be given a chance but the newer of the two GH comics is the
top dog in the eyes of Dynamite and their readers. Waid's art and
Indro's pencils couple to make a kick in the ass that reviewers all
over the world have said is the best rendition of The Green Hornet to
date, which is a huge compliment seeing as how the character has been
around since the late 30's or early

40's. And the book is just
getting started too, lot's more is on it's way including a crossover
title between The Green Hornet and The Shadow and more from the
“Legacy” book. For me, this character has the making of becoming
something truly special in the world of comics, especially with a top
tier talent like Mark Waid at the helm and art that pop's out at you
the way that it does. Phenomenal!

I could go on and on about these
pulp titles. MASKS, Miss Fury, The Black Bat (a personal favorite),
and more.....but instead I'll just kick back and let you be the
judge. That's right. I CHALLENGE you to give these books a shot
whether it be through single issues, trade/GN's, or digitally through
Comixology and tell me that these aren't some of the most enjoyable
comics you've read in a while. Seriously, I think that as successful
as they are they've yet to truly scratch the surface and I believe
that this whole revolution will be something special that we'll
remember for quite some time to come, especially by those who
embraced the movement. So, with that said I want you to get down to
you're local comic book store or grab you're closest iOS or Android
device and snatch up some of these Dynamite Entertainment gems, I
truly think you'll see what I'm talking about and stay on board for
the long haul. If not than at least you can say you tried them, but
yeah, prepare for a long and blissful stay upon the S.S #PulpComics.
Cheers!#PulpComics #SaveTheSpider

Thursday, May 23, 2013

You know what's bad? Hydlide for the
Nintendo Entertainment System is pretty bad. Yeah, it's an
action/adventure/RPG that is a lot like The Legend of Zelda except
that The Legend of Zelda is a far superior game, but to Hydlide's
defense the game was create about 3 years prior to Zelda. That, of
course, was back before they had the technology to polish a game and
make it engrossing like they did with the original Zelda. It was
actually originally a PC game that had been released in 1984 that was
eventually ported over to the NES sometime in 1988, the problem is
that in the 4 years between it's original release and it's life on
the NES they didn't appear to do anything to make the game any
better. Since I've never played the PC version of the game in it's
entirety I have to assume that it's an exact port and that the
Nintendo version is the same as it's PC counterpart from start to
finish. Which is mind blowing to me in many ways because the NES was
capable of producing a much better game than this. Especially since
it had games out at the time that trump Hydlide in almost every
category you could rank them at.

This game really doesn't have much
going for it, either. The graphics are extremely poor, the control is
kinda slow and chunky, and it's one of those games where you cant
really tell if you're hitting the enemies or not. In combat when you
attack nothing really happens except for a small health bar that
appears at the top of the screen and depletes when an enemy is dying.
This makes things really difficult when fighting monsters because you
have no sense of spacing, you end up taking a lot of damage thanks to
your sword not moving outward to hit your opponent. Also, if your
enemy hits you first you have to back up before attacking again
otherwise you'll continue to lose heath, which is extremely annoying
and makes you want to punt an elderly woman in her jaw. Or better
yet, it's so annoying it makes you want to unleash a poisonous snake
into an

infant ward at a hospital.

Another thing I kind of dislike
about the game is that there is a lack of dungeons, or at least a
lack of cool dungeons I should say. For an action/adventure/RPG game
such as this I look forward to dungeon crawling and fighting awesome
bosses, but sadly Hydlide doesn't offer a whole lot of cool dungeons
or fun bosses with most of them being annoyingly fast skeletons or
some kind of variation of other monsters already in the game. Most of
Hydlide's dungeons are more like navigating houses from a top down
view. Instead of going into a dungeon and adventuring to the final
boss like in Zelda or a game like Dragon Warrior, the dungeons are
not presented on their own screens, they share the outside view along
with the grass and trees. The only time a dungeon becomes it's own
screen is if there is a downstairs or an upstairs, which happens from
time to time but isn't really fun or engaging and ends up being more
of a death maze more than anything.

The game as a whole wasn't really
popular either. I personally knew one person who had it back in the
“NES Age” and he didn't really play it much, in fact almost every
review I've read basically ranks this game among the worst in the NES
library. But was it really all that bad? I mean, yeah, it's
bad.....but it isn't the worst game in the extensive annals of the
NES, that will forever be reserved by Impossible Mission II.
Impossible Mission II was a game so bad it was unlicensed by Nintendo
and I happened to buy it for $7 during the NES' prime. In a time when
Nintendo games were $49.95 brand new you knew you were getting a real
classic when you found one for under $10 still in it's factory seal.
Could you sense the sarcasm? I've also played a few other games that
suffered from worse game play mechanics, worse music, worse control,
and other factors that would lead me to play this game before I even
looked at them. So I guess all in all Hydlide is just bad and not
completely terrible like some would lead you to believe.

And with that said, Hydlide does
have some charming aspects to it that actually make it quite fun at
times. First of all, the music is pretty catchy. Sure, it's a simple
looping theme that sounds a bit like the Indiana Jones theme and
doesn't have a whole lot behind it, but it does kind of makes you hum
along to the soundtrack while your playing. And second, the main
character moves at a speed that makes it kind of easy to escape a
potentially bad and/or hazardous situations. I actually like that in
my video games. I know that isn't a glaring example as to why someone
should purchase and play Hydlide, but at least it's something to
separate this title from the sea of bullshit that is floating around
out there. But that's about where the good graces of this game come
to an end. I think one of the must frustrating aspects of this game is that it takes place within a small window on the screen thanks to an overlay that takes up a great deal of space. Was this really necessary? You're health, magic, and XP bar are located on the side of the screen on what looks to be a brick wall that also shows a small picture of your character alongside another bar that for some reason shows you if you're defending or attacking. To make matters even worse the brick wall that takes up almost half your screen manages to display the Hydlide logo at the top while showing the name of the game along the bottom. That's some serious bullshit because the player obviously knows what game they're playing and there was no need to spam the title on the screen twice. Well, instead of going off more about how disappointed I was
with Hydlide I think I'll just wrap this puppy up and hit you with the final numbers......

Friday, May 17, 2013

Why hello there! Welcome to the first
installment of The Retro Video Game Addict's reviews and insight
blog, a place that both celebrates the great retro games of good and
humiliates the crappy retro games of bad.

The first game I am going to
review for the new blog is a game that is very well known to fans of
classic video games thanks to it's extreme popularity and the fact
that this game helped to popularize a code that many video game fans
still know to this day. The code is known as the “Konami Code”
but many refer to it as the “Contra Code” since Contra is the
game that made the configuration famous. That's right boys and girls,
today The Retro Video Game Addict is going to review Contra for the
Nintendo Entertainment System!

Ah yes, many of you may remember
countless late nights on the couch or early mornings in your bedrooms
navigating the fierce jungles or other intense locations within
Contra, but I know that all of you surely remember just how fucking
hard this game actually was. This game wasn't just hard, it was a god
damn ball buster, but it was also fun as hell once you've entered in
the “Konami Code” and settled down with a second player to
proceed into what sometimes felt like a long, slow, ass raping. It's
difficulty aside, I would say that this game was truly one of the
most prolific 2-player games on the NES and certainly one of the most
popular. I didn't know anyone who didn't own this game back in the
heyday of the Nintendo Entertainment System, or at least I didn't
know anyone who hadn't at least played it. Contra was seemingly
everywhere and the game was so popular it spawned some sequels on the
NES and eventually quite a few other platforms like the Gameboy,
Super Nintendo, Genesis, and even the Playstation, but none of them
quite captured the awe-inspiring greatness of the original classic.

The story of the game as well as
the gameplay itself was pretty basic. It revolved around two armed
soldiers, Lance and Billy, as they scour an unnamed South American
island aiming to destroy a terrorist organization that was trying to
take over the Earth in a “run n' gun” gameplay simulation . Bam!
No 6 hour story here. No dramatic cut scenes that look like they were
ripped out of a horrible blockbuster movie. Nope, just about 2 ½
hours worth of intense side-scrolling action and a couple of bloody
thumbs. This is exactly the kind of game that both kids and adults
were addicted to some 20-25 years ago and if you were playing
alongside another player than it didn't get much better than this.
You got to love it!

See, if this game came out today
you'd have a 7 or 8 hour video game with extremely well done cut
scenes that would take up about ¾ of the actual content leaving you
with about 2 hours worth of solid gameplay. The developers would do
their best to discreetly hide this with a multiplayer option that
would be cluttered full of 12 year old boys calling everyone “noobs”
as they blast their way to a high score. Yeah, that sounds like it
would be well worth my $60! Please. Some games were truly meant to be
what they were and Contra is certainly one of them, there is
absolutely no need to release this franchise on current generation
hardware since the developers would most likely just ruin it with
pile after pile of modern bullshit. No thanks, kiddies.

Some of my personal memories with this game include a buddy of mine, Kenny M, coming over some mornings and playing this game with me before we had to go to school. I've also played this game quite extensively with my friends Chris B and Kenny K, it seemed like I've put hours of time into the game in the single player mode but the 2-player option is what has made me fall in love with Contra. I remember sitting on my bed with my friend Chris one Sunday afternoon and we slammed this game into my NES and we didn't stop until we hit the end, it was a grueling test of skill and effort but we made it and I'll always remember that day as long as I live. Contra is one of those games that you just remember putting quite a bit of time into though you've probably not many people who have actually completed the game without using the code or an apparatus like a Game Genie, it's just too damn difficult. But I guess that was somewhat the norm back in the ol' NES days, the library of games that were just too insanely difficult is too long to list but yet it didn't stop people from trying. I think if this was the case with today's games people would pack it up and run quicker than a Jewish man depositing his check in the bank. Seriously, today's "gamer" has grown too fickle and they don't seem to want to put too much time or effort into their games anymore. But not us children from the 80's, oh no, we would keep pounding away until we broke some ground and got the job done.

And now we will discuss the actual game and where it's strengths and weaknesses are found. First of all, we've got to talk about the sound effect and music within Contra and how they strike a sense of nostalgia with those who grew up playing the game. Everything from the theme that plays while the start screen comes up after pressing the power button to the sounds of the guns going off is quite frankly the stuff of legend among gamers. The 8-bit music that can be heard while running through each level has become "humming" tunes for many of us and I would say that Contra had some pretty fun tunes throughout the game. Honestly though I've got to say that it's been a while since I've made it past the first few levels so I don't remember all of the music, but I do remember a good portion of it which speaks volumes since I haven't heard much of it in close to 20 years.

The game controls just fine, everything is responsive and I wouldn't say it struggles with sluggish performance or anything, it can just be very annoying when bullets are flying everywhere and it becomes insanely hard to dodge them while you're making your way through the level. The graphics are pretty nice and represented the NES quite well back in the day. The visuals are nothing too outstanding mind you, but you can clearly see where you need to jump and there is no major weakness in this category as everything looks fine. It's funny how developers were able to get so much more out of the NES toward the end of it's life-cycle with games that have visuals that put Contra to shame, but I guess that could be said for any video game console. But most importantly the game is fun, and that's why we play games....correct? For the fun? Yeah, that's exactly why people played video games back in the day but I'm not entirely sure that's why people are playing video games today for whatever reason, but that's another blog for another time. And now onto the totals......

Graphics/Visuals - 7.5

Sound/Music - 8.0

Controls/Handling - 8.5

Fun/Enjoyment - 8.0

Well, I hope you enjoyed the first entry into The Retro Video Game Addict! Thanks for reading and I hope to see you come back for more as I keep adding new reviews and insight on retro video gaming, take care!